Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (40 page)

 
          
“Jesus
Christ, Ysidro, one bullet ricocheting in the wrong direction could’ve cooked
us all,” Townsend said.

 
          
“Hey,
we’re already fuckin’ stupid for accepting this assignment in the first
place—this is a job for the grunts,” Ysidro said. “I’m a guerrilla, not a
trash-hauler, and if we blow, we blow. Let’s just get the hell out of here.
Linnares, get your ass out here and load these explosives
now!”
Johann Linnares, the leader of the flight crew, stepped out
of the de Havilland along with his crew—they had killed the two guards who
tried to lock them up in the plane as soon as they were alone.

           
“I still don’t fucking understand
why we had to kill these guys this time around,” Ysidro said as the crews began
to load the explosives and weapons aboard the cargo plane. “These guys were
swaggering assholes, but they were generally straight with us, and we been
trading with them for a long time. What gives?”

 
          
“Things
are going to get too hot around the clubhouse once we begin the next series of
attacks,” Townsend said. “We paid these blokes pretty well, but when the feds
see what we’re about to do, the heat gets turned up and the reward money for
our heads will undoubtedly be more than assholes like Crenshaw could resist. I
think Henri was correct—once these attacks are completed, it’ll be time to open
up some new sources of hardware. By then, we’ll be the top dogs in the
terror-for-hire game. We’ll have the world’s pick of the litter.”

 
          
‘7/
we survive,” Ysidro said. “Henri really
is
fuckin’ possessed, and I think we’re gonna need the Devil’s help to get out of
this alive.”

 
          
Dallas-Fort
Worth
International
Airport
,
Sunrise

           
Two
Days Later

 
          
If
you had to go to war, had to deploy at a moment’s notice, had to hump all night
to get your unit set up and operational as fast as humanly possible, there were
worse places to do it than Dallas, Texas.

 
          
Lieutenant
Colonel Valerie Witt, U.S. Army, emerged onto the catwalk with a cup of coffee
just as the first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon, putting the skyline
of the city of
Dallas
in stark profile. The dawn was hazy and cool, but she had ditched her
field jacket back in her new office downstairs hours ago. She allowed herself
the luxury of drinking in the sunrise, letting the brilliant yellow sun charge
her batteries. For a moment, she was back in her hometown of
Ogunquit
,
Maine
, watching the sunrise from her parents’ home on the coast, or on the
beach at Treasure Cay in the
Bahamas
on her honeymoon. Beautiful. Just
beautiful...

 
          
But
as she scanned the horizon an unusual sight brought her back to reality very
quickly—and Avenger FAADS (Forward Area Air Defense System) unit parked a few
hundred yards beyond the approach end of runway 35 Right. It was hardly more
than a speck out there, but its two box launchers aimed skyward, each
containing four Stinger heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles, could be seen. This
was not her honeymoon. This was not home. Yes, it was
Fort Worth
,
Texas
, but it was also war.

 
          
Valerie
Witt was the commander of Third Battalion, 43rd Regiment, and was the senior
air defense artillery battalion commander deployed to the defense of
Dallas-Fort
Worth
Airport
. Her communications headquarters were on
the second level of Dallas-Fort Worth’s multistory control tower, where she had
a clear view of all her air defense units at DFW; but her weapon command
center, the AN/MSQ-16 MICC (Master Information and Coordination Central), a
large steel green-painted box crammed full of radar sets, radios, and air
conditioners (for the electronics, not the humans who work inside), had been
hoisted up onto the roof of terminal 2W of Dallas-Fort Worth. Beside the MICC
was the AMG, or Antenna Mast Group, a truck carrying two UHF antennas that
linked Witt’s MICC with all the air defense units surrounding Dallas-Fort
Worth. Because DFW was one of the busiest and most important airports in the
United States
, there were a lot of air defense units
deployed here to try to stop Henri Cazaux if he tried to attack here.

 
          
Eleventh
Brigade, from Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas, had deployed six of Witt’s Third
Battalion Patriot missile batteries in the area—two at Carswell Air Force Base,
west of Dallas-Fort Worth, two at Naval Air Station Dallas to the south, and
two batteries at Fort Worth-Alliance Airport, north of the city of Fort Worth.
Each battery had four Patriot missile launchers—half the normal number, because
so many airports in the nation had to be covered—and each launcher contained
four missiles.

 
          
In
addition, there were four platoons of Hawk medium- range surface-to-air
missiles spread out on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth, twelve launcher
units for a total of thirty-six Hawk missiles; and eight Avenger units,
stationed at each end of the four runways kept active at DFW, for a total of
sixty-four short-range Stinger missiles. Patriot Communications Relay Groups
scattered all across Tarrant and
Dallas
counties ensured tight coordination between
the Patriot batteries and Witt’s battalion MICC, which controlled all the
Patriot, Hawk, Avenger, and Stinger surface- to-air missile sites surrounding
Dallas-Fort
Worth
Airport
. In turn, Witt’s command center was tied
directly into the overall Air Defense Force Commander, an Air Force officer she
did not know, orbiting over
El Dorado
,
Texas
, in an E-3C Sentry AW ACS (Airborne Warning
and Control System) radar plane. Although Witt could launch any of the missiles
defending Dallas-Fort Worth, primary responsibility of launching missiles at
any one of the major airports in the south-central United States—Dallas-Fort
Worth, Houston-Intercontinental, Houston-Hobby, Memphis, Tulsa, Nashville, and
New Orleans—or directing any fighters on intercepts, was in the Air Force
officer’s hands.

 
          
Witt
finished a walkaround of the catwalk around the control tower, checking the
weather, checking the airport, and catching a glimpse of all the HAWK and
Avenger units deployed around the huge airport. Far to the south, she could see
two F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters leaping into the sky from Naval Air Station
Dallas, then peeling away to the east with afterburners roaring. Air defense
units, fighters—this was something you’d expect to see in
Beirut
, or
Baghdad
, or Tel Aviv—not
Texas
. What was going on in this world when a
single terrorist could hold a nation hostage like this, force it to restrict
the rights of its own citizens in order to defend itself?

 
          
Witt
returned to her little headquarters—consisting of several banks of radios,
computers, and radar repeater— just as the secure radio crackled to life: “All
Tiger units, all Tiger units, stand by for a poll of the air defense force.”

 
          
Witt
reached over and picked up a telephone, which was wired directly into her MICC
van down below: “Tiger 100, report.”

 
          
It
looked huge from the outside, but the Master Information and Coordination
Central van was barely big enough for three persons inside. The Battalion
Engagement Officer, Captain Jim Connor, sat on the left in front of a large
twelve-inch digital radarscope, surrounded by switchlights, indicators, and a
keyboard; he was responsible for making the decision on whether or not any
missile unit in the battalion would fire on a hostile target, and for taking
over as Battalion Force Commander if communications between the Air Defense
Force Mission Commander on board the AWACS radar plane were lost. The Battalion
Fire Unit Technician, Master Sergeant Mike Pierini, sat on the right, with a
virtually identical radar setup as the Engagement Officer. Pierini was
responsible for identifying all targets on radar and classifying them as
friendly, hostile, or unknown (if the crews aboard the AWACS plane had not
already done so), assisting the Engagement Officer, and maintaining
communications with the battalion’s missile units.

 
          
Between
them was a dot-matrix printer, and above that the LED readouts and status
displays of all the rounds remaining of all the missile units under Witt’s
command.
Reading
off the status display, Connor responded:
“Ma’am, Tiger 100 shows all units in the green: Ninety-six Patriot, thirty-six
HAWK, and sixty-four Avenger Stingers ready. All units acknowledging HOLD FIRE
command.”

 
          
“Very
well, Tiger 100, out.”

 
 
          
Aboard the E-3C Sentry AWACS Radar Plane

           
Orbiting
Over El Dorado, Texas

 
          
Army
Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Witt might have been incensed to learn that the
overall Air Defense Force Mission Commander for the south-central United States
was about ten years younger than she, had five years less time in the military,
and was only an Air Force major, but that described William “Kid” Kestrel, the
Mission Crew Commander (MCC) aboard Tiger Nine-Zero, the E-3C Sentry Airborne
Warning and Control System radar plane. Kestrel was short, blue-eyed,
fair-haired, and slight, and he looked even younger than age thirty-eight—he
looked far younger than anybody else on the twenty-two-person AWACS crew,
although he was probably the oldest.

 
          
Kestrel
was one of eleven Air Defense Force Mission Commanders airborne at that moment
aboard E-3C Sentry radar planes, covering the entire continental United
States—the others were stationed over Elizabeth City, North Carolina,
Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Indianapolis, Indiana, covering the northeast;
Gainesville, Florida, covering the southeast; Des Moines, Iowa, covering the
Midwest; Cimmaron, New Mexico, and Billings, Montana, covering the Rocky
Mountain region; Mormon Mesa, Nevada, and Porterville, California, covering the
southwest; and Lakeview, Oregon, covering the northwest. Flying
one-hundred-mile racetrack patterns at twenty-nine thousand feet, the E-3C
Sentry, with its powerful AN/APY- 2 Overland Downlook Radar mounted on a thirty-foot
saucer rotodome atop the converted Boeing 707 aircraft, could detect and track
any aircraft in flight for three hundred miles in all directions.

 
          
After
one aerial refueling three hours ago, Kestrel’s crew had been on station now
for eight hours, with four more hours to go before another plane would launch
from Tinker Air Force Base in
Oklahoma City
to take their place. Under normal
circumstances, this might be boring work. Air traffic had subsided to a
fraction of its normal levels after the government ordered that all aircraft
flying within the United States had to take off and land at airports with
control towers, had to file an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan, and
had to be under positive radar control at all times—and of course, the prospect
of having several tons of high explosives dropped on your head inside an
airport terminal kept a lot of people from flying as well.

 
          
But
a lot of civilian and commercial aircraft that stayed on the ground were
replaced by other aircraft: military fighters, escorting airliners all over the
United
States
. The best estimate said that over two hundred F-16 ADF and F- 15
fighters of the Air National Guard’s total inventory of three hundred air
defense fighters were airborne at any one time, shadowing any aircraft, big or
small, that violated any of the new flight rules or did or said something
suspicious. Every airport in the United States with a five-thousand-foot
concrete runway and jet fuel available probably had a fighter land there at one
time or another in the past twelve hours.